Hearthpwn

Warning! Since Blizzard has confirmed that they will be announcing balance changes at the end of this month, it would be unwise to craft anything unless you plan on getting immediate value from it and will not be upset if a synergy card is nerfed.

Although Blizzard has a good track record of giving full dust value to cards that are directly nerfed, indirectly nerfed cards receive no such benefit. For instance, in the 10.2 patch (January 2018), both Raza the Chained and Patches the Pirate were directly nerfed and full crafting dust value was given when disenchanting them. However, the nerf to Raza was also an indirect nerf to Kazakus, Shadowreaper Anduin, and Prophet Velen. All of these are still good cards, and can be used in other archetypes, but it should still be considered.

Similarly to Raza, when Patches was nerfed, it was an indirect nerf to Prince Keleseth (still good and seeing play in spiteful druid) and Southsea Captain (an evergreen card now seeing poor play and win rates). While it is very likely that the meta rotating Patches out would also have brought Southsea Captian down, people who crafted it anytime before late January could feel upset.

Little knowledge is known for what cards will be changed. All we do have at this point is an unofficial statement by IksarHS on reddit saying that cards that are being discussed for nerfs are Naga Sea Witch for wild and "Sunkeeper, Call to Arms, Baku Paladin Hero Power, Spiteful, Lackey, Gul’dan, Dark Pact, Librarian, Quest Rogue, and Doomguard." in standard.

Now for some speculation.

Iksar mentioned 3 specific legendaries in the form of Sunkeeper Tarim, Baku the Mooneater, and Bloodreaver Gul'dan. He also mentioned "Quest Rogue" which likely refers to The Caverns Below. Any changed card will likely be eligible for full dust refund. However...

There are many legendaries that were not specifically mentioned, but would be indirectly nerfed by changes. Spiritsinger Umbra and Prince Taldaram, and Skull of the Man'ari all take a hit once cubelock is nerfed. Lord Godfrey and Rin the First Disciple also take a hit because control warlock will likely take a hit as well.

Spiteful Summoner being nerfed is a big hit to Prince Keleseth and lesser of a hit to other common legendaries in spiteful decks like Leeroy Jenkins, The Lich King, Malfurion the Pestilent and Chameleos.

Sunkeeper Tarim and Call to Arms is a hit to any popular paladin card. Tirion Fordring, Val'anyr and The Glass Knight being the likely ones to lose value.

Nerfing the "Quest Rogue" archetype hits The Caverns Below (if not being directly nerfed again), Sonya Shadowdancer, Valeera the Hollow, and Zola the Gorgon.

I hope this helps people in their crafting decisions!

4 mana summon way too much damage. This is a treasure that the player can get in Monster Hunt as well as a card that is used by Gnomenapper.

There are 50 collectible gnome minion cards as of Witchwood, keep in mind that all gnomes from wild can be summoned as well. Like other summoning effects, battlecries are not processed. I have not seen any mechanognomes summoned from this, but that may just be my low sample size.

Notable gnomes

• Rin, the First Disciple - She is powerful mainly due to her taunt than her deathrattle
• Mekgineer Thermaplug - A 9/7 that has an aura effect of generating leper gnomes! INFINITE VALUE!
• Toshley - Decent stats and a spare part on death isn't that bad
• Wee Spellstopper - Protect your better minions from dastardly hero powers!
• Chillblade Champion - Who doesn't like instant 3 healing? (and also possible trading too)
• Knife Juggler - come now, you are already well familiar with the powerful juggalo
• Patient Assassin - stealth and poison for trading against whatever powerful minion you like (as long as they don't have AoE)

There are 9 1-attack gnomes, 13 2-attack, 15 3-attack, 5 4-attack, 5 5-attack, 1 6-attack, 1 7-attack, and 1 9-attack gnomes for an average of 2.94 attack. There are 9 1-health gnomes, 13 2-health, 9 3-health, 10 4-health, 3 5-health, 4 6-health, and 2 7-health gnomes for an average of 3.1 health. So the average summoned gnome will have 2.94 attack and 3.1 health or basically be a 3/3.

There are 3 gnomes with taunt, 2 with charge, 2 with stealth, 2 with spell damage +1, 2 with C'thun synergy (can you get C'thun in a random bucket?), 2 with conditional +2 attack (bringing the 2.94 average practically to 3), 1 with poison, 1 with lifesteal (yay), 1 that hurts you (boo), 1 that makes your spells 1 mana cheaper (yay), 1 that makes your opponent's spells 1 mana more expensive (also yay), 1 that makes your minions cheaper, 1 that juggles knives :) , 1 that protects your other minions, 1 that heals you if you have a secret (hello tracker synergy), and 9 deathrattle gnomes with all useful effects.

While it is a pickable treasure, many players will first encounter this card when fighting against Gnomenapper. His hero power of "stuffing a minion into a sack" when he has a full board essentially becomes a 2 mana Assassinate so good luck fighting back after he plays this. This is such a poorly designed encounter that it would be funny if it wasn't so damn frustrating. BTW, he summoned Rin the first time I fought him. I could not get past her so it was game over two turns later.

I can't wait to beat up on Duskfallen Aviana as punishment for getting her as my first witchwood legendary.

The moment that a player presses that Concede button, the match is over. ALL animations should stop and the game ends. This applies to everything, not just Shudderwock. Currently it is better to Quit Game than to Concede as at least then you don't have to watch several minutes of you dying while a lizard yells at you.

If you're enraging players enough to quit the game, they may just not start it back up again.

That being said, Shudderwock *is* the problem, not Grumble. Shudderwock limits all future battlecry *card* design space. Think about that for a moment. Shudderwock existing limits the ability to make any powerful battlecry for shaman or neutral cards in the future. Yes it's mostly minions, but hero cards and weapons have battlecries too.

If you made Shudderwock so that it cast random battlecries played this game, but only up to a certain amount (somewhere between 3 to 5 or so) then it would be fine. The animation wouldn't be that annoying, and there would be no infinite battlecries.

Here are my suggestions (based not only on the current meta but future potential). Feel free to ignore them. :)

Skull of the Man'ari - Move from tier 1 to tier 2. This card does define cubelock and will always be useful but it really isn't an auto-include in any other type of deck. Also since its effect happens at beginning of turn it can be pricey when the meta has any decent amount of weapon tech. It certainly isn't a staple.

Rhok'delar - Move from tier 2 to tier 4. Oh boy I'm probably going to get hate on this especially while spell hunter is currently hot. Yes you should still include it in spell hunter decks, but it's nowhere near as powerful as the minions that are actually making this deck hot; Barnes and Whysharjay... and they are moving to the wild only pool where spell hunter may not have the oomph to stand against other cheatier decks. I'd also like to point out that if you sort spell hunter decks by winrate on horseplay.net, the top two decks don't include it currently.

Cairne Bloodhoof - This is fine at tier 3 but you used the word effect when you meant to use affect and it really makes me grind my teeth. Please change it... unless of course that you did it just to mess with people like me, in which case, well played. Please note that I would never ever do this. :)

Prince Valanar - Move from tier 4 to tier 5. Sorry to anyone who likes this card but when you replace it with Saronite Chain Gang and your winrate improves, you've got a big problem.

I'd also like to make a case for moving Frost Lich Jaina back to tier 2. I'm not going to, but I'd like to.

yes, you can't silence tribal affiliation

Quote from FortyDust >>

Bookmarking this thread so I can necro it in the midst of the Hand Druid meta.

Quote from Magitact >>

I cannot believe they did this.  I thought they would have dipped their toes in the water at first with multi-tribal tagged minions.  I was thinking along the lines of a card that is a dragon in your hand but turns into a beast on the board.  While this does enable multi-tribe deck building, I believe they will regret printing this card.  For the next 2 years in Standard, Team 5 has limited their design space for 3 mana tribal minions.  Every 3 mana tribal minion will be measured against Amalgam and if it doesn't have the stats it better have a powerful keyword, effect, or synergies within its respective class or it will not see play.  

• Patches the Pirate - Demon/Pirate - Patches belongs to the race of demons known as observers just like Floating Watcher.
• Captain's Parrot - Beast/Pirate - Even with a Southsea Captain buff it's still a bad card, but it makes sense
• Pyros - Beast/Elemental - Pyros is obviously a beast, which brings us to others like...
• Thunder Lizard, Crackling Razormaw, and possibly several others - Beast/Elemental - Thunder Lizard even already has elemental synergy.
• Mechanical Dragonling (from Dragonling Mechanic) - Dragon/Mech ...also a bunch of Beast/Mechs like Mech-Bear-Cat or Exploding Sheep
• ...and should we ever get Cookie from The Deadmines, he's obviously a Murloc/Pirate

Quote from Vancold19 >>

Very cool art.

I just don't like that, as a neutral card, it seems better than Darkshire Alchemist

Quote from alpaca417 >>

How is zero an even number this is a travesty to anyone who maths 

 

• The old way of doing solo content, adventures, didn't work out for them due to not having enough cards for a meta.
• Adventures needed to be easy so everyone could unlock the cards. [...]
• Making the adventure more challenging then usual due to no card rewards turned out to be a positive. They learned players enjoy the challenge and lots of people played.

You are made of stupid!

If adventures did not have enough cards, you could, I don't know, maybe ADD MORE CARDS. Ever considered that?!! You could have made a 10 wing adventure, each wing costing 700g and unlocking 12 or so cards, and it would still be cheaper than an expansion, despite being insignificantly smaller.

As far as difficulty and replayability is concerned: You had heroic mode for players who wanted a challenge. And it felt good browsing your collection to figure out how to beat the bosses. Even nowadays, I sometimes like to try out new cards against old bosses, and it's sad that you will never add new bosses again. 

And who says that players need to get the cards without any challenge whatsoever? You could actually make players work for the cards. Disregarding the fact, that most bosses can be beaten with cheap decks anyway. One of the best experiences in videogames, one of the core mechanics of every RPG ever is to beat a big boss and get a cool new sword or spell to beat the next big boss. Just like in Dungeon Run.

Speaking of which, here is another idea: Maybe keep a system like Dungeon Run, that is fair despite challenging and open to every player, and make it rewarding nonetheless. How about rewarding players for taking up the challenge? How about allowing players to progress in the game by spending more time in the single-player portion? How about tying the replayability to something worth playing it over and over again aside from one card back? How about FINALLY adding something like achievements? Oh, my mistake, that would actually improve the game and possibly make you earn a little less.

The flimsy excuses for stupid decisions (remember the cancelled tournament mode?) were embarrassing before, but this is almost comedic. Like how hard can you try to justify making the game more and more expensive without ever getting to the only point that really matters - you just want to make more money?

Don't get me wrong, I am all for more cool single-player content. And I'm really excited about the "Rumble Run". Just kinda sad that you are playing as some rookie troll without a team, instead of picking one out of 9 champions (=class) and then challenge the other 8. Also, it's a slight disappointment, that there won't be any final bosses this time around. But the best part about Dungeon Run and Monster Hunt is to make a powerful deck and obliterate powerful bosses, and the Shrines deliver just that. I think these "build your deck" kind of adventures are fun and pretty well made from a game design perspective, and I am looking forward to them every time.

However, please stop treating your playerbase like idiots. You gave up old adventures, because they were too cheap. You could have improved them to be more relevant, more replayable, and more challenging, but you decided instead to just go with expansions where you can sell anything between 50 and 500 packs. Everybody knows. When you then claim that it was "not possible" or "not fun" or whatever, you come across like acting all innocent while secretly rubbing your hands, like a smug villain in a cartoon.

The person writing all these articles really needs to learn the difference between "then" and "than."

And now my post will be downvoted into oblivion, but the grammar policeman inside of me is content. Thank you.

"The old way of doing solo content, adventures, didn't work out for them due to not making enough profit"

Success for Blizzard =/= Success for players